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![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
I haven’t been this happy since Matt & Mohinder started living together on Heroes!
(I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head, but I’m still too much in shock/squee to coherantly put them to the internets.)
There’s a partial transcript of the Q&A up at The Leaky Cauldron.
I’m very happy about the news, too.
And we have the homophobic responses starting to roll in. Heheheh. People’s reactions are going to be super.
Actually, I’m kind of annoyed.
For two reasons: One, saying Dumbledore was gay after Book 7 was published and there aren’t going to be any more is kind of a cop-out. Would have taken a lot more guts (and been a lot more interesting) if she’d spelled it out in Book 7, rather than leaving it subtextual and admitting it only after Potterdammerung is well over.
The other: Lupin was gay. Tonks was a dyke. They got married off to each other as soon as possible after some fans pointed out to Rowling that Lupin “read” as gay, and they were both killed off – in fact, Tonks was never seen alive again after she married Lupin. Outing Lupin and Tonks would have been something I’d have welcomed, no matter when it happened.
And finally, though I admit this beyond what you can expect of any writer: Harry Potter is probably one of the most widely-read children’s books in the world, and certainly the most widely-read children’s book in recent publishing history. It would have been a fantastic thing to do for LGBT children at school if Neville (or any of the kids – but I had hopes for Neville) had turned out to be gay, living with (in a civil partnership with!) another man. But no. He gets married off heterosexually like the rest of the kids, and the only gay man Rowling will admit to in the Potterverse is Dumbledore, and she won’t admit that he ever had a relationship with anyone except unrequited love for an evil wizard.
.
Though I think it is really wonderful that she stopped the film script writers from heterosexualizing Dumbledore–it really is, she retroactively leaves us with “tragic” and “evil” gay love, which is pretty homophobically cliche.
Plus making sure he’s celibate seems to be a way of appeasing the conservative Christian crowd who is OK with you being gay as long as you don’t actually have sex with any same-sex partners. So a pretty luke warm move for a series that is supposed to be condemning bigotry in all its forms.
Also, her being pretty explicit with making his one brother being into bestiality with goats is a little too close to assigning homosexuality as akin to it as a family sexual pathology –I really, really hope she wasn’t going for that.
It just doesn’t give anything positive for queer kids reading the books to identify with.
Also, this revelation is probably a pretty good marketing ploy anyway. They’re probably counting on more people coming to see the movie if whether or not Dumbledore is explicitly portrayed as gay is at issue, as well as whether other after-canon revelations are added in or not. It’s just another deployment of the “Gay Kiss for TV Sweeps Week,” using queerness as a suspense creating mechanism to draw in the audience. Capitalism first and foremost. JKR probably had to wait to make sure using this strategy was on with the film studio suits before revealing it. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t have ever said anything because she is a good businesswoman first and foremost. And by the time the next film comes out, they’re hoping the religious homophobic protestors–the small amount that actually went with Potter fandom, will have worked through the worst of their anger, so that it’s controversal enough to garner publicity, but not riot inducing. That’s all this revelation is.
They?
Lavendertook, I don’t like your diminution of Rowling’s agency, or of her profession as a writer, in calling her “a businesswoman first and foremost” and suggesting she had to consult film studios before revealing something about her characters.
levendertook: Plus making sure he’s celibate seems to be a way of appeasing the conservative Christian crowd who is OK with you being gay as long as you don’t actually have sex with any same-sex partners. So a pretty luke warm move for a series that is supposed to be condemning bigotry in all its forms.
Yeah, but: the series doesn’t. True, Rowling does deal with one form of racism by pointing out the absurdity of “Mudblood” vs. “pureblood”: but (as previously discussed) the house-elves and the goblins remain a discriminated group, inferior by their nature to the human wizards. Hagrid, a half-giant, never gets to have a sexual relationship with anyone. There’s plenty of bigotry in other forms taken for granted in the Harry Potter books: Hermione’s violent reaction against the exploitation of the house-elves is presented as being just a bit of teenage rebellion, not teenage activism that turned into adult activism.
Also, her being pretty explicit with making his one brother being into bestiality with goats is a little too close to assigning homosexuality as akin to it as a family sexual pathology –I really, really hope she wasn’t going for that.
Wouldn’t surprise me if she was, though.
I’m with Yonmei on this one, and I think Johann Hari said it all two years ago anyway.
Sorry, Ide_cyan, but I am suspicious of her after-publication revelations when she could have made clear Dumbledore was in love with Grindewald and indeed gay in the books–and she made this revelation with a reference to the film script. She herself brought up the issue of the filmverse, and when it comes to the filmverse, the creators are a group–it does not involve her agency alone. So I am thinking her after-publication-but-before-the-films-are-out revelation has more to do with marketing than writerly choice.
Yonmei–Oh, totally agreed.
I dunno, I many of you guys are going to far into it. I don’t think it’s a problem if she’s just doing it to rake in movie tickets or whatever. Maybe it’s not wrong that she left GLBT issues out of the hard copy. It might have been harder to get her books into the hands of kids if she hadn’t. In today’s cultural climate gays and lesbians are far “worse” than wizards and magic… there are many lessons about tolerance, love, racial equality and liberty present in JK’s books. It doesn’t all have to be about GLBT people. Anyway,t he point is that we’ve just scored a major cultural point. The majority of people who read HP love Dumbledore. He is wise, strong, intelligent, talented and successful. And he’s gay. Period. His sexuality isn’t the focus.
The waters are gradually warming. GLBT characters present in the context of children’s books are closer now. Dumbledore is a pioneer: he has shown that young readers will continue to embrace a character regardless of his sexual co
*orientation.
Frank: It might have been harder to get her books into the hands of kids if she hadn’t.
True for most writers, but Book 7 of Harry Potter? Not true.
The majority of people who read HP love Dumbledore. He is wise, strong, intelligent, talented and successful. And he’s gay. Period.
No, he’s not: not canonically.
Subtextually, Dumbledore, Remus, and Tonks are all gay. Canonically, however, Dumbledore’s sexual orientation is never made explicit, and Remus and Tonks get married (and while I interpret that as the dyke and the gay werewolf being beards for each other, that’s subtext.)
J. K. Rowling’s post-book interviews are not part of the canon, though they tell us that the subtext for Dumbledore’s sexual orientation was intentional on her part, while the subtext for Tonks and Remus was not.
There’s some interesting analysis of this on Pandagon and the blog thread following.
Okay, I think it the shock’s worn off. The squee’s still there, but my thoughts are a bit more coherant.
1. I don’t believe Rowling did this for publicity or controversy or to be “PC” or any of the stuff I’ve seen written. She was asked a question. She answered the question. And given how much Book 7 was about Dumbledore being transformed from an untouchable idol to a flawed individual, I’m not surprised that she never said this before Book 7 came out, if she was in fact asked.
2. I’ve heard people (not here) gripe that Dumbledore’s sexual orientation is irrelevant. And yet it’s not. While subtext, Dumbledore/Grindelwald *is* in Book 7. And skimming over parts of it, it’s amazing just how subtexty the subtext is. Seriously, the only reason the larger fandom after the book debuted didn’t start declaring Dumbledore/Grindelwald canon is because of heteronormativity. But really, the subtext between Dumbledore/Grindelwald is much more prominant than, say, subtext between Ron & Hermione in early books.
3. Nevertheless, Rowling does take care to keep the subtext as subtext. She was playing it safe there. <– a bit irritated here.
4. I don’t object to the way Dumbledore/Grindelwald was portrayed. It’s classic love and betrayal. Heterosexual people get plotlines like that all the time!
5. Likewise, I don’t think Rowling was comparing homosexuality to beastiality. Aberforth and his goat always struck me as a sort of double entendre for older fans. And didn’t Rowling dodge the question during an interview because the asker was too young? But she comes right out and says it about Dumbledore, and his relationship with Grindelwald is a huge part of humanizing him in the last book.
6. Dumbledore is not a minor character. Not by any means. Even with the confirmation coming post-text, it’s still amazing that the Headmaster of Hogwarts, one of the most powerful wizards of modern times, the only one he ever feared, the guy Harry names his kid after — is gay. There’s a saying I’ve heard, the feeling that “no one who ever did anything of importance ever felt the way you do.” Friday night, that feeling was lessened just a little bit.
7. I like that Rowling stopped the movie people from heterosexualizing Dumbledore. Woot! Two more movies still left!
Yonmei: Was Dumbledore’s love for Grindelwald unrequited? I thought it was just because Grindelwald went to the dark side and all.
Lavendertook: Where does Rowling say Dumbledore was celibate? (I haven’t seen a complete transcript of everything Rowling said, so I could be missing a comment.)
The “unrequited” bit was a paraphrase from one of the early news reports. In other transcripts I’ve seen, she just says that Dumbledore was horribly, terribly let down when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. Nothing about unrequitedness.
(…the local newspaper has a report on this news this morning, and they made the mistake to write that AD fell in love with GG *after* he fought him.)
Yonmei: Was Dumbledore’s love for Grindelwald unrequited? I thought it was just because Grindelwald went to the dark side and all.
What Ide Cyan said: I saw an early news report.
4. I don’t object to the way Dumbledore/Grindelwald was portrayed. It’s classic love and betrayal. Heterosexual people get plotlines like that all the time!
Oh, come off it: yes, heterosexual people get plotlines of love and betrayal, but heterosexual people also get longterm love, first love, sexual love, and happy love. Even if Hagrid doesn’t get a long-term relationship, J. K. Rowling didn’t shuffle about and hide his feelings for the woman he fell for! Harry’s feelings for Cho and for Ginny, and Cho’s feelings for Cedric, and James’ feelings for Lily – none of them were subtextual or hidden away or just denied out of existence.
i’m with s. a. bonasi.
also, in response to yonmei’s last point: teachers & headmasters can’t be compared to students in their openness of their relations etc. Yeah, okay, tonks & remus. So JKR decided to be a controlling author and determine what her characters were and were not — well, that’s what authors do: they get pissy about what fans decide and they go their own way. Sometimes it works better than other times. Rowling was a controlling author in this line for a long time, hence the afterword. … And while we’re on it: I never got the Tonks-as-a-dyke thing so much; I think folks were trying to read a little bit too hard. (In fact I think people saw Tonks as a dyke in part because they wanted to match Remus & Sirius.)
Look, Rowling is, no question, a white middle class (newly REALLY wealthy ) heteronormative lady. This is a step up from what I ever imagined she would do. She could have left unquestioned assumptions unquestioned and arguable subtext only implied. Instead, when she made missteps (forgetting about gay people, the house elves thing) she tried to fix them to some extent. No, she didn’t alter the preexisting history, and no her fixes weren’t radical. She’s certainly not radical, but she’s a well-meaning liberal. As a radical I get tired of people jumping all over liberals. WTF. Welcome to the movement — duck!
It may well be that JKR intended all along to have HP be a prolonged argument for tolerance, and if so, bully for her. And if she decided somewhere along the way that she wanted folks to question authority then bully for her again. And my guess is that writing HP was a growth process for her. So she decided to, within the framework of her own stories, create a gay adult character she couldn’t have done better than Dumbledore.
Okay, she keep it subtextual but still I think it’s kinda awesome. Nobody is going to hold out HP as a fundamental Gay Liberation text, but please. She didn’t have to say anything about Dumbledore being gay. She could have remained completely mum about it and just quietly self-satisfied but instead she decided to throw us a bone.
Anyway, this wasn’t about extra publicity or extra money or anything like that. It was just her throwing us a bone (that she had privately decided before writing book 7 at least). She’ll have both good & bad press out of this (did you see the hateful shit on vox populi?).
IMO, it ”does” affect the canon even if it’s not in the text (dumbledore-is-straight fanfic will now definitely be non-canonical or straight slash). And we can already see that it affects things because she’s assertively making sure the movie does not conflict with it. Which is, again, AWESOME.
We can nitpick it and wish she had been better all along and wish that Dumbledore had been more overt or whatever. But I’m happy she did it.
laura q: teachers & headmasters can’t be compared to students in their openness of their relations etc.
Hagrid is a student now?
Okay, she keep it subtextual but still I think it’s kinda awesome. Nobody is going to hold out HP as a fundamental Gay Liberation text, but please. She didn’t have to say anything about Dumbledore being gay. She could have remained completely mum about it and just quietly self-satisfied but instead she decided to throw us a bone.
Yeah, well, somehow I’m done being grateful and happy and puppyishly pleased that the nice heterosexual lady decided to be so generous and throw us a bone.
IMO, it ”does” affect the canon even if it’s not in the text (dumbledore-is-straight fanfic will now definitely be non-canonical or straight slash).
No, it won’t. Dumbledore’s sexual orientation is not canon. We can all make interpretations from the published text. Rowling can tell us after the fact what she intended to be subtextually conveyed, but this doesn’t make it canon.
I also have mixed feelings on this….
On the one hand, I’m glad that there’s finally (!) a queer character in the Potterverse, and that it’s not Percy Weasley. Dumbledore looms large as a powerful and largely positive character, which means a lot. I think the power of HP fandom is such that JKR’s revelation has more power than it would for just about any other author. People listen to what she says; look how much media attention her statement has already gotten. And kudos for keeping the film from trying to squeeze in one more heteronorm.
On the other hand, I think it’s terrible that she made this decision about her character and then deliberately left it out of the books. And I can’t help but think that knowing JKR conceived of Dumbledore as gay adds some homophobia to the subtext.
He falls for Grindelwald, and the relationship leads him down a morally wrong (actually, anti-Muggle prejudiced) path for a while, and leads directly to the death of his sister. He has to redeem himself by defeating his old love in battle–a very public renunciation.
Does anyone else remember a scene in which Harry reads an article imputing that there was something perverse and improper about his relationship with Dumbledore, and it makes him feel dirty? This rang my homophobia bells at the time, and in the light of the new revelation it risks raising the tired old conflation of same-sex sexuality with pedophilia.
If Dumbledore’s sexuality had been made explicit, it might have made the fact that this accusation is motivated by homophobia (and fairly realistic). But instead it’s just a sticky insinuation…and the structure of the book uses it for suspense, giving the reader the option to believe it for much of the story.
… on throwing bones: maybe i care less about this because i never cared much about the harry potter-verse and always saw it as basically just an amusing way to spend a few hours in a world created by a nice heterosexual middle-class white english woman. it’s like my sister. the fact that her coming to my commitment ceremony was widely construed as “gracious” and “big” of her is annoying on multiple levels, but on some level it is. because it’s where she is.
not that i think there’s anything wrong with critiquing it. it’s just — like bell hooks says, we criticize the things we care about, and i never cared that much. unlike, IMO, joss whedon, i never saw j. k. rowling as trying. so any sign of a little effort from JKR makes me happy, and there are fewer mixed emotions than with, say, my sister’s (grudging, “gracious”) “acceptance” of my relationship. I mean, I could never engage that much with HP because of the narrowness of the worldview, I think. it was always too cozy and not very deep. (liz disagrees and it would be good to hear from her on this.) I mean, from the criticism here one could get the impression that it would be better if she had not made this announcement, not confirmed the relationship, and so on.
… hagrid: okay, whatever. he wasn’t really a teacher, more of a friend, but arguing about it in that level of detail is already giving way more importance to intentions and definitions and consistency in the harry potter canon than i think is warranted. i like pandagon’s take on it – amanda nailed that rowling is just very skittish about anything not 50s-style sexuality.
… canon: i didn’t say the announcement was “canon” (as if there were a hardcore definition of canon), i said itaffected canon. fans will write whatever they want & call it whatever they want, but straight dumbledore is now more clearly non-canon. it’s canon-in-negative, if you will.
… i do think zahra nailed some of the troubling aspects of how rowling handled dumbledore’s sexuality in book 7. if she was, in fact, laying out a subtle case of dumbledore’s sexuality, then i think it’s very troubling to consider whether she used homophobia to do some of that work. (the hateful vox populi has no problem going there.)
I’m just annoyed that the character I hate the most turns out to be queer. Why couldn’t it have been Tonks, Lupin, Ginny, or any of the others that read as queer?
Here’s an eyewitness account of Rowling’s reading and Q&A, which gives more context to the question about Dumbledore.
pz myers @ pharyngula linked to some wingnuttery bitching about it, for those who like to keep abreast of what the right is thinking.
God, how annoying: I actually agree with the wingnut bitching.
He’s dead right: if Rowling wanted the authorial authority to say “Dumbledore is gay” it had to be in the text of the novels, and, as the wingnut notes, she didn’t say it there. Any commentary afterwards is post-publication authorial interpretation about what she says the reader should find in her novels, and that’s not something I think the author can do: see my post on Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool. “Dumbledore is gay” carries no more weight than “Neville is straight”….
Yonmei: that’s not something I think the author can do
I think authors can do whatever they want. They can say it’s backstory, they can say it is or is not what they intended, etc.
And readers can do whatever they want. Choose to accept the authorial intent/statement as part of the character, or draw a line between the textual statements by the author and extra-textual statements by the author. It’s all fiction and ya gotta admit that “canon” is an arbitrary line, however you draw it.
IMO, I think author commentary has some weight.
Laura: I think authors can do whatever they want. They can say it’s backstory, they can say it is or is not what they intended, etc.
Of course they can. They can also stand on their heads, do yoga, and make vegetarian curries. What they cannot do, however, is force the reader to read the subtextual intention of their writing as the author intended.
and ya gotta admit that “canon” is an arbitrary line, however you draw it.
Oh, sure. Ask any fan what’s canon and – depending – there will be considerable disagreement: does subtext count, if it’s broadly accepted? If it’s “confirmed by author”? Do author’s comments count? On the other hand, if it’s explicitly in the text, it is canon (unless one bit of canon contradicts another bit of canon… &c, &c).
IMO, I think author commentary has some weight.
It can if the reader wants it to: it won’t if the reader doesn’t. More broadly, in fandom, author commentary has exactly as much weight as fans in general want it to have.